Before curfew began, every person on the list Yue Kun had provided was arrested by the Firewood Gang.
The arrests caused an enormous uproar in Cloud Dragon County.
The families of those named on the list gathered in teams and went to the Firewood Gang headquarters to make a scene, but the gang drove them away with an even firmer show of force.
The next day, Guo Jinchuan and Yue Kun, the masterminds behind the incident,
were subjected to the hammer execution in front of a crowd of gang members in Emerald Cloud Valley. The gruesome, blood-soaked sight made many of them throw up the food they'd eaten the night before.
Shen Mu also attended the public execution. He watched the whole thing without changing his expression.
He knew the Firewood Gang was using this to intimidate its members. After all, some of them had betrayed the gang. If they weren't punished severely, such incidents would surely become more common in the future.
As for the other accomplices, the Firewood Gang's higher-ups had also come up with a solution.
The accomplices' families had to pay a thousand taels in ransom within a month. Otherwise, they too would be subjected to the hammer execution.
The families were shocked when they heard the amount. They went together to the County Yamen to report the Firewood Gang for using private punishment, but the county magistrate couldn't be bothered to deal with them and simply had them driven away.
In the end, most of the families had no choice but to scrape together the silver to ransom their relatives...
After the incident, Emerald Cloud Valley returned to its former tranquility.
Shen Mu was unaffected and continued his usual routine.
He rose before the morning sun and began body tempering to improve his blood qi.